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Sex, Power, and Politics in the Roman Empire

Caesars' Wives

Sex, Power, and Politics in the Roman Empire

In scandals and power struggles obscured by time and legend, the wives, mistresses, mothers, sisters, and daughters of the Caesars have been popularly characterized as heartless murderers, shameless adulteresses, and conniving politicians in the high dramas of the Roman court. Yet little has been known about who they really were and their true roles in the history-making schemes of imperial Rome’s ruling Caesars—indeed, how they figured in the rise, decline, and fall of the empire.

Now, in Caesars’ Wives: Sex, Power, and Politics in the Roman Empire, Annelise Freisenbruch pulls back the veil on these fascinating women in Rome’s power circles, giving them the chance to speak for themselves for the first time. With impeccable scholarship and arresting storytelling, Freisenbruch brings their personalities vividly to life, from notorious Livia and scandalous Julia to Christian Helena. Starting at the year 30 BC, when Cleopatra, Octavia, and Livia stand at the cusp of Rome’s change from a republic to an autocracy, Freisenbruch relates the story of Octavian and Marc Antony’s clash over the fate of the empire—an archetypal story that has inspired a thousand retellings—in a whole new light, uncovering the crucial political roles these first "first ladies" played. From there, she takes us into the lives of the women who rose to power over the next five centuries—often amid violence, speculation, and schemes—ending in the fifth century ad, with Galla Placidia, who was captured by Goth invaders (and married to one of their kings). The politics of Rome are revealed through the stories of Julia, a wisecracking daughter who disgraced her father by getting drunk in the Roman forum and having sex with strangers on the speaker’s platform; Poppea, a vain and beautiful mistress who persuaded the emperor to kill his mother so that they could marry; Domitia, a wife who had a flagrant affair with an actor before conspiring in her husband’s assassination; and Fausta, a stepmother who tried to seduce her own stepson and then engineered his execution—afterward she was boiled to death as punishment.

Freisenbruch also tells a fascinating story of how the faces of these influential women have been refashioned over the millennia to tell often politically motivated stories about their reigns, in the process becoming models of femininity and female power. Illuminating the anxieties that persist even today about women in or near power and revealing the female archetypes that are a continuing legacy of the Roman Empire, Freisenbruch shows the surprising parallels of these iconic women and their public and private lives with those of our own first ladies who become part of the political agenda, as models of comportment or as targets for their husbands’ opponents. Sure to transform our understanding of these first ladies, the influential women who witnessed one of the most gripping, significant eras of human history, Caesars’ Wives is a significant new chronicle of an era that set the foundational story of Western Civilization and hung the mirror into which every era looks to find its own reflection.

Praise

"A groundbreaking study of some of the most powerful women in early Western civilization….The author breathes new life into these overlooked subjects. A captivating look at imperial Rome’s roots in the making of the modern stateswoman."

"A groundbreaking study of some of the most powerful women in early Western civilization….The author breathes new life into these overlooked subjects. A captivating look at imperial Rome’s roots in the making of the modern stateswoman."

– Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Fascinating and enjoyable."

– Publishers Weekly

"A book both scholarly and racy…[Freisenbruch] restores to life some of the toughest, most colorful, and most bizarre women who ever existed."

– Robert Harris for Sunday Times (London)

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Book Reviews

Reading Group Guide

This reading group guide forCaesar's Wives includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.

INTRODUCTION

Annelise Freisenbruch’s debut book, Caesars’ Wives: Sex, Power and Politics in the Roman Empire, investigates the lives and reputations of the colourful wives, daughters, sisters and mothers of the Roman emperors.

TOPICS & QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

In her Introduction, the author writes ‘This book reopens the case file on Livia and her fellow Roman first ladies, aiming to reveal something about them beyond their static, cartoonish stereotypes. But how do we speak for and about them?’ (p. xx) What are some of the problems faced by historians wanting to study the lives of Roman women? Read pages xx-xxi to help your discussion.

Annelise writes that she takes ‘an agnostic approach’ to the wide array of different verdicts and characterizations of Roman imperial women in her book (p. xxi) Why does the author feel it is important to adopt this approach, and do you think her strategy is a good one?

About the Author

Annelise Freisenbruch was born in 1977 in Paget, Bermuda, and moved to the UK at the age of eight. She studied Classics to postgraduate level at Cambridge University, receiving a PhD in 2004 for her thesis on the correspondence between the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and his tutor Cornelius Fronto. During that time, she also taught Classics at a private school in Cambridge. She has worked as a research assistant on a number of popular books and films about the ancient world, and regularly gives talks to schools about Classics in popular culture. Annelise Freisenbruch was the researcher to Bettany Hughes on her critically acclaimed book Helen of Troy (Vintage). She was also a specialist series researcher on the BBC1 docu-drama series Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire, and is currently working on films on Attila the Hun and Spartacus for the BBC. Annelise holds a PhD in Classics from Cambridge University and has worked as a freelance history researcher in the media for the last four years. She lives in Cambridge, where she teaches Latin to middle-school children. Caesars' Wives is her first book.